“I’ve been alive for so long and I haven’t got anything to show for it,” says middle-aged Eddie (Andrew French). Eddie has mental health problems and was sleeping in a tent before he was rescued by Carol (Tessa Peake-Jones), who found him shivering in the local park. Twenty years earlier, after Carol’s husband left her, the pair had an affair and Eddie disappeared without explanation. Now they are older, lonelier and more vulnerable. Can they save each other from the bleakness of lives lived in isolation and without love? Or will fear and lack of trust corrode their relationship?
There is nothing noisy or flashy about this play by Barney Norris, a chronicle of lives bound by fear, and emotions deeply felt but seldom expressed. This two-hander may appear to be written in a minor key, but it has a Chekhovian comic sadness and speaks loudly to anyone who fears that they will die alone and that nobody will remember them because their life has been meaningless. As Larkin suggested: “What will survive of us is love.”
When Carol describes her job as an electoral registration officer, she does it with the bashful pride of a woman announcing she has just discovered a cure for cancer. Peake-Jones’s face shines as if lit from within. Carol talks of being hefted like a sheep that will always find its way back to its home acre. She owns a house, but she is walled up inside it. The highlight of her life is watching the omelette challenge on Saturday Kitchen.
“You want to grab it while you can, your own little armful of life,” advises Eddie. One of the clever things about this unassuming little play is the way that Norris lightly seeds distrust of Eddie in the audience so that we understand why Carol is so hesitant about taking a leap into the unknown. Is Eddie manipulating Carol or just looking for the lost love that will redeem him?
French keeps us guessing in a subtle, likable performance. Director Alice Hamilton matches the writing for its lack of ostentation but keeps things bubbling along nicely, while James Perkins’ design reflects Carol’s preference for blandly tasteful – what she calls “spruce” – decor. The play is good on the different forms that depression can take, and it’s funny, too. When the pair discuss the kidnapper Josef Fritzl, Carol observes that not many men would want a woman in their basement because “you could never have anyone round”. Not that she ever does.
This small play with a big heart is hardly radical in form but is constructed with craft and grace. There are no theatrical fireworks but the magnification of ordinary lives is quietly affecting. You leave the theatre feeling that you really know these people.
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At Bush theatre, London, until 27 May. Box office: 020-8743 5050.
